1. Technical Field
Example embodiments of the present invention relate in general to a system and method for providing a product order service through an electronic transaction using a smartphone, and more specifically to a system and method for providing a product order service through an electronic transaction using a smartphone such that an online/offline product may be conveniently ordered through the electronic transaction using a shopping-mall-related application service and a partner-company-related application service installed in the smartphone.
2. Related Art
Recently, along with the rapid development of the Internet, electronic transactions, in which products are purchased on-line, increase day by day. Electronic transactions are being increasingly applied to various products including daily necessities, housewares, and electronics.
Such development of electronic transactions has been a result of the development of communication networks as well as the provision of other benefits that cannot be obtained by sellers and purchasers through traditional transaction systems.
That is, advantageously, sellers need not maintain a shop or a separate large warehouse for storing products, and thereby saving funds on facilities and can reflect this in product prices, while the purchasers may shop conveniently and at lower prices without needing to visit a shop.
That is, an electronic transaction is the sale or purchase of goods or services, a portion or all of which is electronically processed, for example, through an exchange of electronic documents.
Similarly to transactions made in the real world, all participants in the transaction participate in the electronic transaction. In the simplest electronic transaction, the participants in the electronic transaction include a cyber mall that provides goods or services, a consumer that purchases goods or services from the cyber mall, and a virtual bank or a credit card company that handles any money transactions for products.
In a process of the electronic transaction, first, a consumer accesses a cyber mall using a terminal connected to the Internet, such as a computer, and then shops. The consumer finds a desired product, delivers a purchase decision to the cyber mall, and provides a payment means such as a credit card number or a password.
The cyber mall verifies the credit card number and password that are presented by the customer with the virtual bank or the credit card company, and requests payment of the purchase price. When the virtual bank or credit card company gives the payment to the cyber mall, the cyber mall delivers the product to the customer, thereby completing the purchase process.
Such electronic transaction shopping malls on the Internet introduce a variety of products and enable the products to be directly ordered on the Internet, thereby simplifying consumers' lives.
However, there are temporal and spatial limitations in that the consumer should find a place at which a computer is positioned, access the Internet using the computer, and place an order by entering his/her personal information and payment information into the computer, or can place an order by telephone, but only during working hours of representatives.
Accordingly, a smartphone solves the above problems by allowing a user to place an order anywhere at any time, without the temporal and spatial limitations. Thus, there is a need to develop an order system that is novel and involves an inventive step, which may allow a consumer to place an order more conveniently and simply and allow a seller to save labor costs on representatives or operating costs on a cyber mall and sell product to consumers at more reasonable prices.
Conventionally, when an online/offline product is ordered using a smartphone, respective applications (for example, an Auction app and a Pizza Hut app) are separately executed to make a purchase (for example, using the Auction app) and to make an order (for example, using the Pizza Hut app), thereby causing inconvenience to the user.
For example, when a product is purchased using a partner company app (for example, the Pizza Hut app), a purchaser purchases a product to which a discount coupon is applied through an open market app (for example, the Auction app) using his/her smartphone and then executes the partner company app to place the order by entering a serial number of the coupon and delivery destination information.
However, when the above process is performed, the user should make a payment through the open market app, remember the coupon number, and enter some personal information in the partner company app. This procedure is too cumbersome.